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bowser100 writes "The US government has released its annual Special 301 report (PDF) in which it purports to identify those countries with inadequate intellectual property laws. Michael Geist digs into the report, noting the list is so large that it is rendered meaningless. According to the report, approximately 4.3 billion people
live in countries without effective intellectual property protection. Since the report does not include any African countries outside of North Africa, the US is effectively saying that only a small percentage of the world meets its standard for IP protection."

"without effective intellectual property protection":4 300 million people in the other countries around the world

If USA is the country that promotes democracy, doesn't this thing kind of say that the rest of the world does not want US IP and patent laws dictated to the them, and that US should respect it? Just like real democracy.

It looks like ~87% of people in the world doesn't like or want ACTA. Why does US push it to other countries, and why is it done with so secret methods?

While my country also does have good copyright laws, I don't want US to dictate us.

When I saw the headline I couldn't help but laugh. I can just picture some fat-asses from the MAFIAA riding around in their limousines and rolling down their windows in poverty-stricken neighborhoods and preaching about how they need to saddle up on these new laws. Then some local would just say "sure, right after I decide which of my 12 children don't starve to death you imperialistic fuck."

The only thing that seems to drive them are money - but that doesn't make them superior. In my opinion they have passed over from promoting progress to inhibiting progress. It's something like the air/fuel mixture needed to make a car engine run well - too little or too much are both limiting the performance and the speed.

Today the innovation in the US is limited by the patent trolls and copyright panic.

I used to not approve, until I actually looked at how other countries have it.

A lot of businesses choose to operate in the US BECAUSE we have the best IP protection around.Not saying it's PERFECT and there are definitely problems (patent thicket no doubt), but it's still the safest for businesses. Many European countries, for example, have what basically amounts to a stronger copyright law. For those aware of the details of IP protection, this is obviously not enough.

There are other benefits to being in the US, but businesses are simply risk minimizers about these things. If you're operating in China you run a very large risk of one of your workers handing the design documents over to his neighbor, who can undercut your price because he didn't foot any of the R&D cost.

Besides, it would behoove us to protect our country's post-industrial/manufacturing industry. If you can't enforce who takes your products and who doesn't (because most of the capital cost is for a "digital" product (thinking design documents here in a PDF)), then you can't afford to produce those things. If you develop a kick-butt iPod competitor in China, you'll never gain any traction in the market because you won't have the resources or political clout to keep someone who got a hold of your design documents from producing the thing you just designed.

Grass is always greener, but rest assured the other guys have their share of weeds, too.

A lot of businesses choose to operate in the US BECAUSE we have the best IP protection around.

Best IP protection for businesses, maybe. But that's only because it's the strongest. If the US reduced the term on copyright to something sane, like 10-20 years, and stopped issuing patents on genes and mathematics, it would still have IP protection more than strong enough for businesses to stay and thrive here. And we the people would get our rights back!

You are assuming that those 309 million approve, which is not the case.

But the people paying for the campaigns and perks for our congressmen DO want it. So a few thousands lobbyists are paying a lot of money to a few congressmen, to get their version of "fair" shoved down the throats of 6.5 billion people. Welcome to America.

It wasn't, it just started at -1 because sopssa was repeatedly modded into oblivion [slashdot.org] in a discussion about Google. And from what I can tell from the content of the comments, unjustifiably so.

Thank you for pointing that out. Though marked -1 Troll, sopssa's posts there appear to me to be his opinions (right or wrong), honestly held and reasonably expressed: not attempts to incite trouble.

Even though this is off topic, I think it is worth mentioning. If not here, where? Moderation affects all Slashdot discussions. If too many mods forget how and why the system works, it can break down. It works reasonably well (unlike most mainstream news sites I have seen) because it focuses on the quality of discussion, not whether one agrees or disagrees. Modding down is meant as a last resort to weed out posts that harm reasoned discourse. It is not supposed to be used merely to express disagreement. It's too late to do much good, but as I seldom spend all my mod points I used some there.

If too many mods forget how and why the system works, it can break down.

Follow the money. A lot of astroturfers and their sock puppets are now mod'ing up/down for advertising purposes. It's quite common for example to see +5 zero content posts saying how wonderful some product is within minutes of a new story. Clearly intended to direct the conversation. They've probably got slashdot accounts to get an early view and mod points. It is less common with non-product based stories but you still see valid post

Yeah it looks like Sopssa has gotten himself his very own troll, that seems to be following him and downmodding whenever he speaks. And how in the hell does one get a "-1 interesting" anyway? That don't even make any sense! He probably pissed off a fanbody, as I had that happen myself a few months back with an Opera fanboy. I actually kinda miss my trollie, it was cute the way he drooled on the carpet and pissed himself if you said anything bad about opera.

If USA is the country that promotes democracy, doesn't this thing kind of say that the rest of the world does not want US IP and patent laws dictated to the them, and that US should respect it? Just like real democracy.

No, for the US, "IP" is the new Colonialism.

The old forms of Colonialism don't work any more, so the USA is trying to make sure the rest of the world is beholden to them.

There are times, when I can't help but conclude that the US is, in fact, rather quite evil and insidious. They only promote democracy if the resulting government will play by their rules. If a democracy decided to tell the US to fuck off, the US would start trying to cause a "regime change".

I don't blame individual Americans for this -- but, US foreign policy sucks. It's largely about protecting American corporate and oil interests.

No, surveys show that most people are pro health care and pro-piracy. The point in general I could see, you just happen to be wrong on this issue. I mean, most people under the age of 35 with an internet connection have pirated themselves. Were it legal, that number would skyrocket.

If copyright only no more than 20 years and breaking DRM to allow fair use, personal backups, device shifting and format shifting were not crimes and if software, math, genetic expressions and human behavior could not be patented, them maybe I would have good IP law as well.

The idea that the USA is a republic rather than a democracy is a recent manipulation of language. It is a representative democracy with the legal form of a republic. That was a settled fact until maybe 15 years ago, when the "not a democracy" slogan started to spread.

I disagree. Ever since our founding as an independent country we have been a republic. We have never had direct voting on laws by the people in Washington, a requirement for a true democracy. We elect people to do voting for us, pretty simple. ( it even applies at a state level for most things, but that's a different discussion )

Oh, and when i was in primary school *40* years ago, they didn't teach us any nonsense about being a 'representative democracy'.

A true democracy does not have to equal a direct democracy, but this is all semantics. The fact of the matter is we live in a place where our votes produce the people who will be voting for us. That is a democracy in spirit.

No. In fact, you couldn't be more wrong. The founders of the US thought democracy was a terrible idea that would lead to tyranny of the majority, so they specifically set out to create a republic with a system of checks and balances to make it more difficult for that scenario to play out. Thomas Jefferson himself is famed for stating, "A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine."

There's 300+ million people HERE IN THE USE living with crappy IP laws!We need to fix our problems at home first!Then some jackass stuffed-shirt can try to tell everyone else how bad they are.Followed shortly by them telling him to eat a dick.

I have yet to see anyone present objective evidence that the existence of copyright, either in its current term/form the US/WIPO/ACTA is pushing, (or at all) helps the economy in the countries in question compared to other systems or models.

Obviously there are significant businesses that thrive now and could only exist with strong copyright protections. Entertainment, media creation, information aggregators and sellers - all require strong copyright to exist. Without these protections they would be hurt, somewhat, and some would go away.

There is incredible interest and energy in people to consume, remix, and to create, even with the existing, extremely long copyright term, and the vast majority of media under strict copyright protections. Would we see dramatic new businesses and opportunities arise if copyright were less stringent or not? Would these new markets and activities be better for economies than the loss of existing industries or not?

What evidence supports the belief that having these companies and these particular industries are what is best for a countries' economy, and for the people whose lives and livelihoods these laws effect? If copyright protections were opt-in for example, but the default were similar to a CC/BY for created content, what new industries would rise up and create value? Would they create more value than would be lost? I don't know of any evidence that can address that question. What if copyright protections were 14 years again, with the ability for owners to pay or re-apply for extensions? That would clear create value in new areas, but would it be better than the current system?

I have yet to see anyone present objective evidence that the existence of copyright, either in its current term/form the US/WIPO/ACTA is pushing, (or at all) helps the economy in the countries in question compared to other systems or models.

Well that's because it's not about helping the countries in question, it's about helping the US. The US produces a lot of IP, so from a US perspective good IP laws are those which result in a lot of money being paid to US companies. It's fair enough if you ask me, since the US government is just looking out for its own interests, which I guess is pretty much what it's supposed to do. On the other hand, the governments of other countries might be doing their job best if they tell the US to go to hell.

I agree wholeheartedly. I have been giving this a lot of thought, and here are the things I would like to see happen. 1) Patent: Monopoly reduced to two years. Honestly, after two years you have probably made your investment back, and even if you haven't, market share and brand loyalty have given you a lock on the market. Monopoly weakened to things that can't be reversed engineered. The original idea of patent was that the guilds would no longer keep the secret of making stuff to themselves. Really,

There's plenty of historical evidence that copyright laws of the kind created by the Statute of Anne and the copyright clause of the US Constitution aided both the economy and (more importantly, I think) the exchange of ideas within their jurisdictions. The UK experienced a veritable boom in publishing after Anne (the dawn of the modern novel and journalism as we know it). Both statutes were author-friendly (rather than publisher-friendly), and didn't significantly restrict the development of the public domain as copyrights expired fairly promptly. It's only with the imposition of absurdly long copyright terms (even just Berne-plus, let alone DMCA and ACTA level) that we've seen the diminishing economic returns, and ballooning restrictions on public freedom. Worse, copyright law as we know it today is much like Prohibition: it's turned too many people into casual criminals, to the point that they question the very real, demonstrable value of copyright altogether.

Entertainment, media creation, information aggregators and sellers - all require strong copyright to exist. Without these protections they would be hurt, somewhat, and some would go away.

Are you sure of that? I remember a time when one got a lot of entertainment from radio and television where the only way we paid was from buying the items they advertised in the programs.

The greatest enemy the media industry faces today is their own greed. They have forgotten the main principle of the capitalist market economy: "KEEP THE CUSTOMER SATISFIED". They have replaced it with one they borrowed from the socialist world: "ACCORDING TO OUR PLANS, WE SHOULD GET THIS MUCH PROFIT"

The very simple fact is that the market has rejected business plans that say people should pay $0.99 for a song, or $17 for a CD, or $15 for a DVD.

Entertainment should be cheaper, much cheaper. I would be dead in a short while without oxygen, or water, or food. But I can subsist much longer without entertainment. With no pressing need, I'm not willing to pay too much for it.

Bring me the $0.10 song, the $1.00 CD or the $1.50 DVD and I'll readily buy them. At higher prices, I will not buy *anything* from the media industry.

I have yet to see anyone present objective evidence that the existence of copyright... helps the economy

You're not going to see that. To obtain such scientific objective evidence would require a certain level of intellectual honesty and rigour, and any intellectually honest assessment of IPR from a macroeconomic perspective would equate it with any other taxation/benefit system and analyse it compared to other such systems. IPR isn't magic, it takes money from one place in the economy and hands it out else

Obviously there are significant businesses that thrive now and could only exist with strong copyright protections. Entertainment, media creation, information aggregators and sellers - all require strong copyright to exist. Without these protections they would be hurt, somewhat, and some would go away.

I wouldn't say that is obvious at all. It is assumed that those industries need strong copyright protections to thrive and I'd agree that is true if they wish to maintain their current business models, but there is nothing to say that those industries couldn't still be profitable without strong copyright protection and new business models.

For example, reduce copyright to shorter amount of time (say 10 years). Disney could no longer rely on their backlog to stay profitable (re-releasing every old move over and over), instead they'd have to innovate and create new content and services.

Freeing musicians to legally sample older works more readily without jumping through licensing hoops would also have some interesting implications on the music industry. People could build off others' ideas more quickly without fear of repercussions. Yes there would probably be a ton of remade garbage, but it wouldn't be a select group of people remaking the garbage like the current pop music scene. Thought Britney Spear's remake of "the beat goes on" sucked? (it did).. well then you are free to try and do it better.

Personally I want to see creativity pushed to its limits, where people have to continually innovate. Rather we have a culture where you can have one good idea then sit on your laurels and profit off it.

Does this study include the 300 million in the US living with bad IP laws? Over restrictive is just as bad as not restrictive enough. The fact that a big company can get a $2 million dollar judgment against somebody for non-commercially (and possibly inadvertently) sharing mere tens of song tracks on a file sharing service MIGHT be a sign that our own system is just as screwed up as the systems with no copyright protection at all.

We are not trending towards a happy medium, at least not if Disney and the RIAA have anything to say about it.

No, they're right. In this age of the internet, we in the rest of the world have to live with their idea of "property" in which a multinational PR shell with enough lawyers can literally own your thoughts.

You know, there's a point where you have to step back and realize that you're a minority (by a long shot) and when you are on your own little unique land its *typically* not everyone else that's wrong.

While the US government will continue waving a big stick at IP backwater countries (/sarcasm) and trying to shoehorn IP laws in during treaty and other negotiations, at least they're not stupid enough to bomb and invade countries over this.

Send soldiers to fight and die to protect Hollywood and recording studios? You'd need 100x more Reality Distortion Field than even Steve Jobs has to spin that one.

The entire developed world (G8ish, or G20 excluding India and China, for the sake of argument) is in a minority compared to the undeveloped world. This does not imply that the developed world should move backward.

That said, within the developed world, US laws have rarely conformed to what the rest of the world has deemed sensible, and when they have, they've been on a several decade time lag in most cases (e.g., universal healthcare, ga

You know, there's a point where you have to step back and realize that you're a minority (by a long shot) and when you are on your own little unique land its *typically* not everyone else that's wrong.

Well, when we were the only country on Earth with a binding written constitution, I'm pretty sure it was everyone else that was wrong. Not that that applies to this situation; in this situation I'm pretty sure the US is wrong, but I wouldn't follow your logic to reach that conclusion.

What trully is inadequate is thinking that "intellectual" entities can be "property"... That's the source of all problems... Period.

Perhaps it is equally inadequate to think that "land" (or for that matter anything at all) can be "property". Early man certainly had little notion of the concept. Unfortunately "property" and the concept of "ownership" in general is one of the things that makes the modern civilization with it's "free market economy" work. If somebody is smart and talented enough to come up with some idea why shouldn't that idea/IP be a "tradable commodity", "property" like most everything else in a "free market economy" ??

"If somebody is smart and talented enough to come up with some idea why shouldn't that idea/IP be a "tradable commodity", "property" like most everything else in a "free market economy" ??"

Because that makes no sense, since ideas can be replicated without any cost. Ideas cannot be "traded" the way physical objects can be traded -- if I tell you my idea, I do not lose it, even though you gain it.

Beyond that, intellectual development is fueled by access to the intellectual developments of others. If y

as a canajen, i'd just like to say it's youse guys and your mafia strong arm ip laws that are bad, bad for business (yes, really), bad for mom & pop, and most of all bad for the children. think of the children.

when big government crawls in bed, drunk on power, with big business, and a big chunk of that big business is media, then the government has crossed a line that doesn't bear crossing. it has said to a big part of big business, "you control what gets out to the public and what the public sees and

Either they are too lax (or laxly enforced) or they basically turn buyers into the modern equivalent to sharecroppers with regard to their property rights in the goods they buy. What we need is a global system that treats copyrighted goods like physical goods, and enforces the norms of physical goods on them. The government's only role should be to create enough artificial scarcity so that the goods can be sold.

some of those countries have no respect for the patented gene sequences found in species in their countries by western scientists

ip law is a way of saying that every thought and utterance is not the common good of mankind but is a monopoly that must be respected, and everyone must contribute cash because you were the first to register something many others probably thought of as well, or in a slightly different form. ip law is a farce. it reards distributors and entrenched corporate powers, definitely at the expense of artists and inventors (NOT in support of them). it overly legalizes and bureaucratizes with hefty intrusions into basic freedoms a byzantine scheme to compartmentalize a process which has been free for the vast majority of humankind's existence: the exchange of simple information

and its not even enforceable. no warchest in all the first world nations can adequately shore up the artificial patronage system ip law defenders imagine. nevermind that ip law doesn't even make economic sense, because with all that intrusive controlling, less is earned than simply letting information go wherever its wanted, and profitting off of ancillary revenue streams created by letting it all hang out instead

ip law is an absurd joke, and is not to be respected. it is your moral duty to ignore it or actively undermine or destroy it

Why does the music industry protest so much? Metallica bitches like four school girls about their IP being ripped off, yet they just played 900 hours of their tunes into my Sirius satellite radio and I recorded, edited, and redistributed it. Thanks, you fuckheads!;)

More importantly, the idea that this so-called "property" needs protection is downright alarming. Most of what Hollywood and the music industry shits out is pure garbage. In the whole of the US we should have banded together and purchased a

So in essence what the lobbyists are forcing the US government to claim is that the entire world is horribly wrong while only the US legal system, which they bought with their own hard-earned money, along with other jurisdictions which were bought out, are the only instances which may be seen as somewhat decent remotely fair.

Meanwhile, the world has enjoyed centuries of cultural and scientific progress and an amazing economic progress, all happening without this sort of totalitarian and draconian type of legislation which is profoundly anti-democratic. In fact, humanity saw great progress being achieved whenever someone found a way to facilitate the dissemination of cultural and educational works, whether by inventions such as writing and the printing press. The internet is the modern day's version of the printing press but can only be a modern day's revolution if the freedom to freely access copyrighted works without the copyright owner's authorization is acknowledged, respected and defended, something which these industry idiots are on a mission to undermine.

I am truly interested in the point of my tax money being spent on this. This just seems like a waste of money. We have better things to do with tax money than point fingers at other countries' IP Laws in how they don't compare to the "USA's totally awesome laws".

The only reason I can think of is to get businesses to setup shop over here than elsewhere. No company can take this report as being objective. This is just childish talk like a boy putting down another boy just to impress a girl; sure BoyA may clai

Copyright was not created back in the days of yore, nor enshrined in the constitution to protect / help the economy.

The express purpose for granting an artist exclusive copy right for a limited period was to encourage the production of more art. (the US constitution is pretty explicit, but so is centuries of common-law before that).

How / why am I having my tax dollar spent on this non-issue. I don't think we have a shortage of art looming, and if we do: I don't see that copyright laws in India are the problem.

I don't think we have a shortage of art looming, and if we do: I don't see that copyright laws in India are the problem.

Didn't you know? Hollywood stopped making movies when China started bootlegging them. That's why Ghostbusters II and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade never got made. Not to mention Titanic, The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, or any Harry Potter movies.

"CanadaCanada will remain on the Priority Watch List in 2010. The United States looks forward to the government of Canada’s implementation of its previous commitments, recently reaffirmed in 2010, to improve IPR protection, and is encouraged by the high level of cooperation between the Canadian and United States governments on IPR matters. However, Canada has not completed the legislative reforms in the copyright area that are necessary to deliver on its commitments. The United States urges Canada to enact legislation in the near term to update its copyright laws and address the challenge of Internet piracy. Canada should fully implement the WIPO Internet Treaties, which Canada signed in 1997. Canada’s weak enforcement of intellectual property rights is also of concern, and the United States continues to encourage Canada to improve its IPR enforcement system to provide for deterrent sentences and stronger enforcement powers. In particular, border enforcement continues to be weak. The United States encourages Canada to provide its border officials with the authority to seize suspected infringing materials without the need for a court order. The United States will continue to follow Canada’s progress toward implementing an adequate and effective IPR protection and enforcement regime, including its progress on actions to address Internet piracy and improve border enforcement."

Ya. We'll get right on top of that.

Though I am pretty sure our Conservative government has bigger problems than your stupid IP laws.

Well now, define important. To the US and its Corporate Entertainment controllers, the IP legislation issue is the most important thing. To the Conservatives, remaining in power after the corruption scandal that's currently hit the presses rolls on through their reputation, so that they can remain in power and Harper can continue to suck up to the USA is likely more important. Its always so embarrassing for Government when the corruption that everyone expects is going on daily actually gets exposed and ever

I was thinking of the detainee torture and killing, and the abortion thing, the corruption thing about access to governmental environmental contracts, and I am pretty sure I am forgetting a thing or two... Bottom line, is they have their hands full of damage control to worry about further pissing off potential voters with a law that will limit what people can do for fun (I.E. Movies, Music, etc..)

Sadly I agree with you that the Liberals are no better than the Conservatives. Their stance has been just as bad

What about people like me who think the concept of copyright is flawed, and that copyleft should be a law instead. In that viewpoint, it is the USA who is breaking the 'law'.

Also any law in which the majority of the population is willfully breaking is not only useless, but also undemocratic and unjust. It weakens the authority of the legal system as a whole when you have these type of laws in effect.

Obama et al. are betting their whole economy on shaky imaginary property rights, this will sour on them, they will never be able to enforce their shaky dream on the rest of us, even if they have 100 times as much military.

According to the report, approximately 4.3 billion people live in countries without effective intellectual property

In other news approx 2 billion people sighed that they have to live with insane copyright law dictated by a cartoon mouse and a few industrial, and wish they were living in democraty, where voting would matter, and the voice of the people (demos) would be heard. Sadly they will have to put up with the facist(*) geronto-ploutocraty they live in...

(*) (Fascist as the classic definition of "industry in collusion with authoritative governement")

I just re-read my post and realized I fell victim to one of the classic blunders! The most famous is never get involved in a land war in Asia, but only slightly less well-known is this: never use an apostrophe in the possessive "its" when death is on the line!